Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

“I knew she’d show up again eventually,” said Neal, he who knows all things, at least retroactively.

When people know you too well, they eventually see your damage, your weirdness, carelessness, and mean streak. They see how ordinary you are after all, that whatever it was that distinguished you in the beginning is the least of who you actually are.

Maturity is retaining a modicum of grace when you do not get your own way.

He said that when you first meet him, you’re meeting his bodyguard. I wrote it down and later taped it to my bathroom mirror, where all truth resides at least briefly. His bodyguard is smart and charming, and keeps people out. Deep inside, his true self is very human, which is to say beautiful and kind of a mess—needy, insecure, judgmental, like mo

Most of these prophets were introverts. Jesus definitely was. He’s never really doing all that much, if you think about it. He doesn’t even tell His own stories. He’d be fired from most churches today. He’s in a world of great fear, there’s evil, violence, and need all around him, so He often finds He needs time alone—in silence, in the desert, on

At one end of the spectrum are those in the throes of lifelong forward thrust, who are focused on goals that turn out to be meaningless, greyhounds at the track who’ve caught the mechanical rabbit of prestige, and at the other end are people with slow-motion tragedies unfolding in their lives.

But if you are married, you are stuck with the person. They consider “my house” to be “their house.” Even if they begin to wear on you, they won’t be going “home.” Marriage means you are their home.

I hate to be wrong, and I hate that I am wrong so often in so many ways, that my thinking is often defensive, judgmental, and skittish. (I have a thinking disorder. I once took a 20 Questions quiz about drinking but substituted thinking and I got most of them: Do you prefer to think alone? Do you hide your thinking from loved ones? Has thinking beg

We are going to save the world by repeatedly busting the dread that looms over us like a blimp, by pushing back our sleeves and distracting it with the next right step and good works.